A field atlas of Arkansas
Start in Bentonville and drive east. In Helena-West Helena's Phillips County, life expectancy is nearly eleven years shorter.
0 miles · Bentonville
A route crosses roughly 330 miles from Bentonville through Little Rock to Helena-West Helena.
Bentonville to Helena
The road from Bentonville to Helena-West Helena runs roughly 330 miles, with Little Rock near the midpoint. It connects Northwest Arkansas to the Delta.
At either end of the drive are Arkansas's highest and lowest county life-expectancy estimates. The difference is 10.8 years.
County life-expectancy point estimates range from 67.7 to 78.5 years, with lower values concentrated in eastern Arkansas.
What the number means
Life expectancy at birth estimates how long a newborn would live if the county's 2019-2021 death rates stayed the same throughout that person's life. It is a population measure, not a forecast for one child.
Many parts of community life accumulate in that number: income, housing, schools, environmental exposure, access to care, and the safety of work and daily life. Together they shape who gets sick and who dies early.
Northwest Arkansas is mostly blue. Eastern Arkansas is mostly red. Central Arkansas falls between them. The map locates the difference. Identifying its causes requires more than a county comparison.
Benton County has Arkansas's highest reported life-expectancy point estimate at 78.5 years.
The top
Benton County records Arkansas's highest life-expectancy estimate, 78.5 years. Among US counties with reported estimates, that lands around the 80th percentile.
Median household income reached $92,632 in 2023, the highest county estimate in Arkansas. Its 7.8% poverty rate was the state's lowest. The same county also had the state's longest life expectancy.
Phillips County's 67.7-year point estimate is 10.8 years below Benton County's.
The bottom
Phillips County sits at the other end of the Arkansas data. Its life-expectancy estimate is 67.7 years. Median household income is $37,338, and its estimated poverty rate is 34.2%.
Helena-West Helena is roughly 330 road miles from Bentonville. The gap between the counties is 10.8 years of life expectancy.
Across Arkansas · The regional pattern
The population-weighted average of county life expectancy is 76.4 years in the story's Ozarks/Northwest Arkansas grouping and 70.7 years in the Delta, a 5.7-year regional gap.
Not two outliers
Benton and Phillips counties are the endpoints, but the pattern continues beyond them. Weighted by 2023 population, the story's Ozarks and Northwest Arkansas counties average 76.4 years. The Delta counties average 70.7. A 5.7-year divide separates the two regions.
The regional groupings are editorial definitions; county membership appears in the map data tables. Averaging 21 Ozarks and Northwest Arkansas counties and 16 Delta counties keeps the comparison from resting on two unusual counties.
Across Arkansas's 75 counties, the correlation between poverty and life expectancy is -0.69; the comparison is descriptive and does not establish cause.
Poverty and longevity
Across Arkansas's 75 counties, poverty and life expectancy move in opposite directions. Their correlation is -0.69. Each additional percentage point of poverty is associated with about one-quarter year less life expectancy.
The slope describes the statewide pattern. It does not promise that reducing poverty by one point would add three months to every county's life expectancy. County conditions overlap, and this comparison cannot isolate them.
A longer view of opportunity
Predicted adult individual-income percentiles across Arkansas counties range from 37.2 to 45.3. Benton County is 42.5, and none reaches the 50th percentile.
Opportunity after childhood
The Opportunity Atlas follows children born in 1978-1983 and measures their adult individual incomes in 2014-2015. The estimates shown here describe children whose parents were at the 25th percentile of household income nationally.
Benton County's predicted adult individual-income percentile is 42.5. Arkansas counties range from 37.2 to 45.3. Each county estimate is below the national midpoint of individual incomes among people born in the same year, across all parental-income backgrounds. That midpoint is not the national average outcome for children from low-income families.
Benton County leads Arkansas in the 2023 income and poverty measures shown here. The Atlas adds a longer view of what happened to children raised there. It does not tell us how children growing up there today will fare.
Arkansas's economic divide reaches farther than wages, jobs, and population growth. It reaches life expectancy.
That should change how practitioners judge growth. Jobs and tax base matter, but they do not tell us whether prosperity has improved the conditions people carry into their health.
Housing, schools, safe work, clean air and water, and access to care accumulate over a lifetime. Public and private decisions shape each of them.
Jobs and tax base are a start. Growth has done more when the people who already live here can expect longer, healthier lives.
Pick any of Arkansas's 75 counties to see how it compares.
Life expectancy measures length of life, not overall quality of life. This story uses it as a cumulative outcome of community conditions. Income, housing, education, environmental exposure, health care, work, and safety can all affect mortality. County patterns are descriptive and cannot identify one cause.
Life expectancy comes from the 2024 County Health Rankings release and reflects 2019-2021 mortality. The Ozarks/Northwest Arkansas and Delta groupings are editorial definitions created for this story, not official regional boundaries. Their averages weight each county's life-expectancy estimate by the USDA Economic Research Service's 2023 population estimate, POP_ESTIMATE_2023. These are weighted averages of county estimates, not regional life tables calculated from pooled deaths and populations by age. County confidence intervals and regional membership appear in the map data tables.
The mobility metric is the predicted adult individual-income percentile for children whose parents were at the 25th percentile of the national household-income distribution. The Opportunity Atlas follows children born from 1978 to 1983 and measures individual income in 2014-2015. A county value of 0.40 means a predicted adult individual-income position at the 40th percentile. The adult ranking compares people born in the same year across all parental-income backgrounds. It does not rank counties or compare only children from low-income families. Point estimates, standard errors, and sample counts are retained.
The sources describe the same counties at different times and for different populations: mobility outcomes in 2014-2015 for 1978-1983 birth cohorts, life expectancy from 2019-2021 mortality, and poverty, income, and population in 2023. Poverty and income use Census SAIPE estimates with 90% confidence intervals. The poverty-life relationship is Pearson's correlation and a bivariate fitted line across all 75 counties. The comparisons are descriptive, not contemporaneous or causal. Missing official values are not imputed. The route is a 328.1-mile great-circle segment sum and is described as roughly 330 miles.
Life expectancy: County Health Rankings & Roadmaps documentation and the 2024 national data workbook used here. Economic mobility: Opportunity Atlas project, the official county outcomes file used here, and its county codebook. Poverty and income: Census SAIPE 2023 state and county file. Population: USDA Economic Research Service population estimates.